Since 1985, in various formats, SLANT -- an independent voice based in Richmond's Fan District -- has offered its readers original commentary on politics and popular culture, including cartoons and selected sundries. Warning: Sometimes that means satirical content. All rights are reserved.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Upon
hearing the news of Earl Scruggs’ death earlier this year (Mar. 28,
2012), my thoughts went straight to a 36-year-old memory connected to a
movie that played for two weeks at the Biograph Theatre (which I managed
at the time) in January of 1976. The film was “Banjoman” (1975).

As “Banjoman” had only been in release for a couple of months when it
played at the Biograph, the two young independent producers/filmmakers/distributors
of the movie starring Earl Scruggs said they were learning the distribution business on the fly. When their 105-minute movie opened at the Biograph
they were there, too ... they had brought the 35mm print with them. It was
their monster-sized sound system that we used to present the film to our
patrons.

The filmmakers were my age (I was 28 at this time). And, I almost think
there was a third guy, but I’m not sure. My bosses in D.C. had booked
the film sometime after meeting one (or more) of the filmmakers in a
social situation; I don‘t remember the details.

Traditional distributors, like Paramount, Warner Bros., and so forth,
generally shipped the prints of their films by way of a courier
accustomed to handling them. Although it was unusual for people to
travel with a print of a movie in the trunk of their car, it was not
unprecedented. As an independent exhibitor the Biograph booked product
from various sources that large movie chains would have routinely
ignored.

“Banjoman” was just such a situation and its distributors actually hung
around at the theater during screenings. They seemed like nice enough
guys.

The first clue: It was unusual when my bosses had me pay those guys directly in
cash from box office receipts. But it was not my job to question it. We even
advanced them some money against anticipated receipts, when they had to
leave after the first week to work in another city. That surprised me but I don't remember if I said so.

Since they didn’t have much in the way of pressbook materials, ad
slicks, etc., I created the Biograph’s display advertisements for the
newspaper. I used stills from the film that I had half-toned. Then I had some type set and pasted it all up. That led to me agreeing to create similar materials for
them to use in other cities. We agreed upon my price. It was something
like $250, plus what it cost me to produce a stack of different sized ad
slicks for them to use in the future.

At that point I think they had two other prints of their movie (with
sound systems) working on the road. We kept in touch by telephone. They
were anxious to get their new promotional materials from me for their
other play-dates. So I did a rush job for them which they said they greatly
appreciated.

Then came the day to ship their print and sound system to them in
another city. The run at the Biograph was over. When the truck driver
came by the theater he told me his helper wasn’t with him, so he said I
needed to put the equipment on his truck. Well, at the time, I was the
only one in the building and I was nursing a slipped disc in my lower
back.

Unless I wanted to be laid-up for a spell, I couldn’t lift the stuff. When the driver asked me how long it would take to get somebody there,
to do the lifting, it annoyed me.

Therefore, I told the driver it was his job to
get that junk on the truck, just to come back the next day with a
helper. Yet, as I spoke with him I suddenly had a hunch that something
was wrong.

The truck driver shrugged and said, OK, he’d come back tomorrow. When I
told one of the “Banjoman” guys what had happened, he said there was
still plenty of time to get the equipment set up for the next
engagement. So shipping it out the next day would be fine.

The second clue: Later that
same day the mailman delivered a bank notice that a $200 check they had
written to me had bounced. Uh-oh!

At this point, in addition to that check, they owed me another $600, or
so, most of which I owed to a printer. And, they owed the Biograph maybe
another $300, or so, because in the second week of their film’s run it didn’t
live up to expectations. It failed to cover the advance in rental
they had received.

By coincidence, I talked with my friend Dave DeWitt right after I got
the rubber check in the mail. Dave had moved from Richmond to
Albuquerque about a year earlier. At this time he was hosting a late
night movie program on television there.

When I told Dave about the check
and about my hunch not to ship the equipment, he said he’d heard of the guys who had produced "Banjoman." He told me he wanted to do a little checking up on them.

No more clues necessary: Dave called
back soon to tell me the jokers I’d been dealing with had left a trail
of angry people behind them out in the West, back when they were
shooting concert footage of Scruggs' tour. It seemed they had found ways
to do a lot of things without paying up front. They had also ripped off
a movie theater that had played "Banjoman," just a month before.

After that unsettling news I told the guys who had been conning me that
until they settled up, I was keeping their sound equipment and print of
"Banjoman." They threatened me with legal action. After a couple of
months with no word from them I sold off their sound equipment, it was
the sort of stuff a band might use.

Then some time later, maybe another couple of months, I was indeed
served with legal papers. By way of a local attorney they sued me for about $90,000. Don't remember
how that figure was generated. I laughed and offered their lawyer the print
of the film and about $800, which was what the equipment brought in, minus what they
had owed the boys in D.C. and me.

Over the telephone line the Banjo Conmen huffed and puffed again. I went
ahead handed over to the attorney their print of "Banjoman." After a
few weeks of silence, they agreed to take the $800. In my view, they were lucky to get that. My guess is most of
that dough went to their local attorney. Or maybe they somehow stiffed him and moved on.

Never heard another word from those guys. Ever since this oddball episode, when I hear Earl Scruggs’ banjo, I
usually can't help but think of the weaselly Banjo Conmen. RIP, Earl.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Note: This is the second chapter of Biograph Times, a work in progress that will hopefully become a book.

Midnight Shows

In
the 1970s, during what some film aficionados call "the golden age of repertory cinema," double features ruled. Perhaps the hodgepodge of double features that was central to the format
of a repertory cinema had something to do with a sense of postmodern
license to combine disparate elements. The
presenting of midnight shows was also an integral aspect of the programming for many such movie houses.

Although films are still being shown in theaters at
the midnight hour, the cultural significance of such screenings has been
in
steady decline since the end of the '70s. While most of what was done at the Biograph was standard practice in
that era for art houses/repertory cinemas, it was somewhat of a
trend-setter with regard to the methodology of promoting and presenting midnight shows.

The formula for how to do it consistently had yet to be codified when a twin bill of so-called "underground" films, “Chafed
Elbows” (1966) and “Scorpio Rising” (1964), was the first special late-night attraction we presented. On April 7, 1972, the show actually started at 11:30 p.m. and was called a "late show."

Over our initial year
of operation I came to understand the sort of pictures that would appeal to the late crowd. So although “The Godfather” (1972) was a critical success and a popular
film the year the Biograph opened, it was not the sort of movie that
would draw an audience at midnight. On the other hand, “Fritz the Cat” (1972), released the same year —
but barely remembered today — was a good draw. When we premiered “El Topo” (1970) during regular hours in the spring of 1973 it flopped. Later as a midnight show it did well.

A 16mm bootleg print of “Animal Crackers” (1930), a Marx Brothers romp that
had been out of release for decades, played well at midnight. Some rock
’n’ roll movies worked, others didn’t. Same with thrillers and monster
flicks. The most successful midnight shows needed a cachet of something
slightly forbidden -- maybe not allowed during regular hours.

In that light, a Marx Brothers title that couldn’t be seen on television
or in a standard movie theater had an extra luster. We rented it
from a private collector who had a beautiful 16mm print.

We
promoted midnight shows
with radio spots on WGOE-AM and with handbills
posted on utility poles and in shop windows. We relied on little or no
newspaper advertising for midnight shows in the early days. We usually
didn’t list them in our regular printed programs, which displayed the
titles
and some film notes for the movies we exhibited during regular hours.

By showing “Animal Crackers,” we may have been breaking some sort of
copyright laws. But the Fan District wasn’t Manhattan or Malibu, so no
one who had any interest in the obscure battle over the rights to an old
Marx Brothers feature film was likely to notice.

In the first couple of years of operation we occasionally rented short
subjects, old TV shows and even feature films from private collectors who
acted as distributors. Some titles were in the public
domain, which meant no one actually had the “exclusive rights” to the
rent out prints of the movie. “Reefer Madness” (1936) was such a title.
Others were like “Animal Crackers,” which, due to a legal dispute,
wasn’t in general release.

My bosses at the Biograph in
Georgetown and I talked about the propriety
of showing bootleg prints of films with murky rights issues several
times. I came to agree with them that we weren’t denying the artists, or
rightful distributors any money. Instead, they saw it as liberating
those
films for people to see. Anyway, we didn’t get caught.

A few years later the issues that had kept “Animal Crackers” out of
release were resolved. So we booked a nice 35mm print from the proper
distributor. It didn’t perform at the box office nearly as well as it
had before, when it was forbidden.

When the Biograph started running midnight shows in 1972 the bars in
Richmond closed at midnight, so there was a lot less to do at 12:01 a.m.
than when the official cutoff time was extended to 2 a.m. in 1976.

Another reason midnight shows caught on when they did was that drive-in theaters,
which had done well in the '50s and '60s, were going out of style fast.
Some of the low-budget product they had been exhibiting found a new home
as late-night entertainment in hardtop theaters.
“Mondo Cane” (1962), “Blood Feast” (1963) and “2,000 Maniacs” (1964) all
played as Biograph midnight shows. Once into the ’80s that sort of movie began
to routinely go straight to video, skipping a theatrical run.

By the time we booked “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” in June
of 1978, going to a midnight show was no longer seen as an exotic thing
to do in Richmond. Multiplexes in the suburbs ran them all the time.
Which ironically made the timing perfect for a kitschy spoof of/tribute to trashy
rock ‘n’ roll and monster movies to become the all-time greatest
midnight show draw.

The midnight show craze of the ‘70s could only have flourished then,
when baby boomers were in their teens and 20s. It came before cable
television was widely available and video rental stores had popped up in
nearly every neighborhood.

Sometimes, a successful
midnight show run came along in the nick of time to pay the Biograph's
rent. On the other hand, as a promoter, there were times when I bit off
more than I could chew.

On
October 22, 1982, “The Honeymoon Killers” (1969) opened as a midnight
show. I had seen it somewhere and become convinced it would appeal to
the same crowd that loved absurd comedies by Luis Buñuel and Robert
Altman, plus those who had adored previously
popular midnight shows, such as “Eraserhead” (1977), or “Harold and
Maude” (1971).

A droll murder spree movie in black and
white, “The Honeymoon Killers” fell flat. Unlike most people, I saw it as a comedy. Mostly, nobody else saw it at all.

*

After-Hours Screenings

Still of Jimmy Cliff as Ivan.

In the fall of 1973, David Levy, then the most active
managing partner/owner of the Biograph Theatres in Georgetown and
Richmond, asked me to look at a film to evaluate its potential. From
time to time he did that for various reasons. In this case he had a new
35mm print of “The Harder They Come” shipped to me.

In those days we had frequent
after-hours screenings of films we came by, one way or another. Usually
on short notice, the word would go out that we would be watching a movie
at a certain time. These gatherings were essentially impromptu movie
parties. A couple of times it was 1940s and '50s 16mm boxing films from a
private collection.

Sometimes prints of films that
were in town to play at another venue, say a film society, would
mysteriously appear in our booth. In such cases the borrowed flicks were
always returned before they were missed ... so I was told.

Although
I don’t remember any moments, in particular, from that first screening
of “The Harder They Come”, I do recall the gist of my telephone
conversation with Levy the next day. After telling him how much I liked
the Jamaican movie, he asked me how I would promote it.

Well,
I was ready for that question. I had smoked it over thoroughly with a
few friends during and after the screening. So, I told David we ought to
have a free, open-to-the-public, sneak preview of the movie. Most
importantly, we should use radio exclusively to promote the screening.
Because of the significance of the radio campaigns for the Biograph's
midnight shows, over the last year, he liked the idea right away.

In this time, long before the era of giant
corporations owning hundreds of stations, a locally-programmed daytime
radio station with a weak signal played a significant role in what
success was enjoyed at the Biograph. For a while we
had a sweet deal -- a dollar-a-holler -- with WGOE-AM, the most popular
station for the under-35 set in the Fan District and environs. In the first half of
the 1970s, the station at the top of the dial, 1590, owned the hippie
market.

Subsequently, on a Friday morning in November
the DJs at WGOE began reading announcements of a free showing of
“The Harder They Come” that would take place at the Biograph that
afternoon at 3 p.m. Then they would play a cut by Jimmy Cliff, the
film’s star, from the soundtrack. This pattern was continued maybe three
times an hour, leading up to the time of the screening.

Note:“The Harder They Come”
(1972): 120 minutes. Color. Directed by Perry Henzell; Cast: Jimmy
Cliff, Janet Bartley, Carl Bradshaw. In this Jamaican production, Cliff
plays Ivan, a pop star/criminal on the lam. The music of Cliff, The
Maytals, The Melodians and Desmond Dekker is featured.

Of
course, Reggae music was being heard in Richmond before our free
screening, but it was still on the periphery of popular culture. As I
recall, some 300 people showed up for the screening and the movie was
extremely well received.

In previous runs in other
markets, “The Harder They Come” had been treated more or less as
an underground movie. As it was shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm for
its American distribution, it had a grainy, documentary look to it that
added to its allure. Upon hearing about the test-audience's approval, Levy
got excited and wanted to book it to run as a regular feature, rather
than as a midnight show.

While it didn’t set any
records for attendance, “The Harder They Come” did fairly well and
returned to play several more dates at the Biograph, at regular hours
and as a midnight show.

Levy became a sub-distributor
for “The Harder They Come.” When he rented it to theaters in other
cities within his region, he advised them to use the same radio-promoted,
free-screening tactic.

In 1973, watching a virtually unknown low-budget Jamaican film after
operating hours in the Biograph had seemed edgy, almost exotic. That night we had no idea how popular Reggae music was about to become.

Over the next few years Reggae
music smoothly crossed over from niche to mainstream to ubiquitous. Bob
Marley (1945-81), dead for over 30 years, still has a huge following to
this day. Reggae's acceptance opened the door for the popularity of the
still-fresh fusion sound of the 2 Tone bands, like The Selecter, The
Specials, the (English) Beat, Madness, and so forth, in the early-1980s.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Note: The second of my three bosses, while I was manager of Richmond's Biograph Theatre, died on Tuesday. Lenny
Poryles drew his last breath on Feb. 6, 2018, at his home in
Arbonne-La-Forêt, France. He was 81. In addition to being an insightful
and reliable person to work with, Lenny was a warm and generous man.
RIP, Lenny.

About six weeks before its Feb. 11, 1972, opening gala this
wide-angle view of The Biograph was
captured by a Richmond News Leader photographer. It was snapped late in
1971, a few days before the new building at 814 W. Grace St. received
its distinctive bright yellow paint-job.

*

On what I remember as a bright morning, it was in early July of 1971, I went to a construction site on the north
side of the 800 block of West Grace Street. Mostly, it was a big hole in
the orange dirt between two old brick houses.

A friend had tipped me
off that she’d been told the owners of the movie house set to rise from
that hole were looking for a manager who knew something about movies and
could write about them. She also said they were hoping to hire a local
guy. Chasing
the sparkle of that opportunity I met David Levy at the construction
site.

Levy was the Harvard-trained attorney who managed the Biograph
Theatre at 2819 M Street in Washington. D.C. He was
one of a group of five men who, in 1967, had opened Georgetown’s Biograph in what
had previously been a car dealership.

Although none of
them had
any experience in show biz, they were hip young movie lovers whose
timing had been impeccable -- they caught a pop culture wave. The golden
age of repertory cinema was waxing and those original partners happened
to be living in what was the perfect town for their venture. They did well right away.

With
their success in D.C. to encourage them, a few years later the same
five, plus one, were looking to expand.
In Richmond’s Fan District they thought they had discovered just the
right neighborhood for a second repertory-style cinema, again using
split weeks and double features. In this style of calendar house
programming one usually adheres to a published schedule. So if a movie
draws well, instead of holding it over you bring it back soon.

A
pair of local players, energy magnate Morgan Massey and real estate
deal-maker Graham “Squirrel” Pembroke, acquired the land. They agreed to
build a cinder block building to house a single-auditorium cinema just a stone’s throw from Virginia Commonwealth University’s academic
campus for the entrepreneurs from D.C. to rent. The "boys in D.C." had to pay for the projection booth equipment, the turnstile (we used tokens, rather than tickets) and the seats, some 515 of them.

At the
time I was working for a radio station, WRNL, so I gave Levy tapes of
some humorous radio commercials I had made for what had been successful
promotions. About 10 weeks
after that first meeting with Levy I was offered the manager’s position
for the new Biograph.

Can't recall all that much about
that day, except I was told I beat out a lot of competition. Oddly, what
I do remember clearly is a brief flash of me sitting in my living room,
trying to be nonchalant, so as to not to reveal just how thrilled I was
at getting that offer. In truth, at
23-years-old, I could hardly imagine a better job for me existed, at
least not in the Fan District.

This all happened three
years after Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of
Virginia merged to become VCU in 1968. In the fall of 1971 there were few signs of the dramatic impact the new university would
eventually have on Richmond. Although a couple of film societies were thriving on
campus in that time, other than local film critic Carole Kass' History of Motion Pictures class, the school itself was offering little in the way of classes
about movies or filmmaking.

There were a few VCU professors
who occasionally showed artsy
short films in their classes. Mostly, independent and
foreign features didn’t come to Richmond. So, in 1971, the coming of the
Biograph Theatre to Grace Street was great news to local film buffs. Generally, it was seen as another sign the neighborhood's nightlife
scene was becoming more attractive to the young adult market.

Levy and I got along
well right away. We became friends who trusted one another. He and
his partners were all about 10 years my senior.

My
manager’s job lasted until the summer of 1983. Owing to unpaid rent Grace Street’s Biograph
Theatre was seized by the landlord four years later. A hundred miles to the north, the
Biograph on M Street closed in 1996. David Levy died in 2004.

In
2018 there’s a noodles eatery in same building that once housed the repertory cinema I managed for 139 months. Now it’s the oldest building
on the block.

*

On
the evening of Friday, February 11, 1972, the adventure got off the ground with
a gem of a party. In the lobby the dry champagne flowed steadily, as the
tuxedo-wearers and colorfully outfitted hippies mingled happily. A
trendy art show was hanging on the walls. The local press was all over
what was an important event for that bohemian commercial strip.

The
feature we presented to over 300 invited guests was a delightful French
war-mocking comedy — “King of Hearts” (1966); Genevieve Bujold was
dazzling opposite the droll Alan Bates. With splashy
news and television stories about the party trumpeting the Biograph's arrival the next night we
opened for business with a cool double feature: “King of Hearts“ was paired
with “A Thousand Clowns“ (1965). Every show sold out.

The
owning partners were all there for the first-ever Biograph party. Other
than the projectionist, Howard Powers -- who was supplied by the
local operators union -- I had hired the theater's opening night's staff: The cashiers were Cathy Chapman and Susan Eskey. The ushers were Bernie Hall
and Chuck Wrenn. A few weeks later Chuck was promoted to assistant
manager and Susan Kuney was hired as a third cashier. I think Joe
Bumiller replaced Chuck as an usher.

The
Biograph’s printed schedule, Program No. 1, was heavy on documentaries.
It featured the work of Emile de Antonio and D.A. Pennebaker, among
others. Also on that program, which had no particular theme, were
several titles by popular European directors, including Michaelangelo
Antonioni, Costa-Gavras, Federico Fellini, and Roman Polanski.

Like
the first one, which offered mostly double features, each of the next
several programs covered about six weeks. At this point Alan Rubin, who
worked in the Georgetown office, did all the mechanical art for those
programs, as he had been doing for the D.C. Biograph. In the initial months he and Levy made the programming decisions, with me throwing in my two-cents worth.

Baby
boomers who had grown up watching old movies on television had learned
to worship important movie directors. Within a certain set, knowing film was cool; it could
get you laid. The fashion of the day elevated certain
foreign movies, selected American classics, a few films from the
underground scene, etc., to a level above most of their more accessible
Hollywood counterparts.

In reading everything I could
find about which films were respected and popular, especially in New York
and San Francisco, it was easy to gather that the
in-crowd viewed most of Hollywood’s then-current product as either
laughingly naive or hopelessly corrupt. Or both. Perhaps most admired of all foreign
films were those considered to be part of the French New Wave, which
began as the '50s ended with the early features made by Louis
Malle, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

What
the first year on the job would teach me was how few people in Richmond
really wanted to see the best imported films in that time. After the opening flurry of interest
in the new movie theater, with long lines to nearly every show, it was
surprising to me when the crowds shrank dramatically in the months that
followed. Which showed me how important that run-up to the opening publicity had been.

As VCU students had been a substantial
portion of the theater’s initial crowd the slump was chalked off to warm
weather, exams and then summer vacation. In that context the first
summer of operation was opened to experimentation aimed at drawing
more customers from beyond the immediate neighborhood. That
gave me an opportunity to do more with a project my bosses had put me in
charge of developing, Friday and Saturday
midnight shows -- using radio in particular to promote them.

By
trial and error I learned quickly that movies that lent themselves to
attention-getting promotion performed better at the box office. Early midnight show successes were “Night of the Living
Dead” (1968), “Yellow Submarine” (1968), “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”
(1971), and an underground twin bill of “Chafed Elbows” (1967) and
“Scorpio Rising” (1964). Most of the failures have been forgotten.

With significant input from
Chuck, the theater’s well-known assistant manager, quirky non-traditional ad campaigns were designed in-house. Chuck's help with developing the style we used for choosing these late shows and promoting them effectively can't be overstated.

We learned there were
two essential elements to midnight show promotions: 1. Wacky radio spots had to be created and run on WGOE, a popular AM station aimed directly at the hippie listening audience. 2.
I made distinctive handbills that were posted on utility poles, bulletin
boards and in shop windows in high-traffic locations. Both elements had to show a sense of humor.

Dave
DeWitt produced the radio commercials. We happily shared the
copy-writing chore. In his studio, Dave and I
frequently collaborated on the making of those spots with an ample
supply of cold Pabst Blue Ribbons and whatnot. Most of the time we went
for levity, even cheap
laughs. Dave had a classic announcer's voice and he was quite masterful
at physically crafting radio commercials. He was more of a nitpicker for
perfection than I was, so we made a good team.

On
September 13, 1972, a George McGovern-for-president benefit was staged
at the Biograph. Former Gov. Doug Wilder, then a state senator, spoke.
We showed "Millhouse" (1971), a documentary that put President Richard
Nixon in a bad light.

Yes, I was warned that
taking sides in politics was dead wrong for a show business entity in
Richmond. Taking the liberal side only made it worse. But the two most
active partners who were my bosses, Levy and Rubin, who was a
geologist turned artist, were delighted with the notion of doing the
benefit. They were used to doing much the same up there. So with the
full backing of the boys in D.C. I never hesitated to reveal my
left-leaning stances on anything political.

Also in
September “Performance” (1970), a somewhat overwrought but well-crafted
musical melodrama -- starring Mick Jagger -- packed the house at
midnight three weekends in a row. Then a campy, docu-drama called
“Reefer Madness” (1936) sold out four consecutive weekends.

The
midnight shows were going over like gangbusters. To follow “Reefer
Madness” what was then a little-known X-rated comedy, “Deep Throat”
(1972), was booked as a midnight show. By then the Georgetown Biograph
was experimenting with playing naughty midnight shows. In Richmond,
we had played a handful of films
that had earned an X-rating, they had been more
artsy than they were vulgar. This was our first step across the line to
hardcore
porn.

*

As “Deep Throat” ran only an hour, master
prankster Luis Buñuel’s surrealistic classic short film (16 minutes),
“Un Chien Andalou” (1929), was added to the bill, just for grins. It
should be noted that like "Deep Throat," Buñuel’s first film, was also
called totally obscene in its day. Still, this may have been the only
time that particular pair of outlaw flicks ever shared a billing ...
anywhere.

A few weeks after “Deep Throat” began playing
in Richmond, a judge in Manhattan ruled it was obscene. Suddenly the
national media became fascinated with it. The star of "Deep Throat,"
Linda Lovelace, appeared on network TV talk shows. Watching Johnny
Carson pussyfoot around the premise of her celebrated “talent” made for
some giggly moments.

Eventually, to be sure of getting
in to see this midnight show, patrons began showing up as much as an
hour before show time. Standing in line on the brick sidewalk for the
spicy midnight show frequently turned into a party. There were nights
the line resembled a tailgating scene at a pro football game. A
determined band of Jesus Freaks took to standing across the street to
issue bullhorn-amplified warnings of hellfire to the patrons waiting in
the midnight show line that stretched west on Grace Street. It only
added to the scene.

Playing for 17 consecutive
weekends, at midnight only, “Deep Throat” grossed over $30,000. That was
more dough than the entire production budget of what was America’s
first skin-flick blockbuster.

The midnight show’s
grosses conveniently made up for the disappointing performance of an
eight-week program of venerable European classics at regular hours. It
included ten titles by the celebrated Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman.
The same package of art house workhorses played extremely well up in
Georgetown, underlining what was becoming a painfully underestimated
contrast in the two markets.

On the theater's first
anniversary I made a list of all the titles we had presented. A few
noteworthy shorts films were on the list, such as Chris Marker's "La
Jetée" (1962), but I omitted most shorts. The list, which I had printed
as a flyer to hand out, was over 200 titles long.

In 52
weeks, to establish what we were, the Biograph had presented over 200
different films, some in a couple of runs. Split weeks with doubles
features, plus midnight shows, chewed up a lot of product. By the end of
the first year Levy, Rubin and I knew we needed to make some changes in
our programming.

The Fan District was not becoming Georgetown and in spite of what
some folks were predicting, maybe it never would. To be successful in
Richmond we realized we had to do more to cultivate the audience here to
appreciate the sort of films we loved and most wanted to present. And,
in the meantime, we had to figure out how to stop losing money at an
alarming rate.

To start, maybe fewer old Bergman flicks.

*

Here's a small sample of the first year's avalanche of sweet double features. In this case I chose to have 12 double features on the list, because that's typically what was on one of the Biograph's calendar style programs in the first year of operation:

Feb. 12-14, 1972:“King of Hearts” (1966): Color. Directed by Philippe
de Broca. Cast: Alan Bates, Geneviève Bujold, Pierre Brasseur. Note:
The first movie to play at the Biograph was a zany French comedy, set
amid the harsh but crazy realities of too much World War I.“A Thousand Clowns” (1965): B&W. Directed by
Fred Coe. Cast: Jason Robards, Barbara Harris, Martin Balsam. Note: A
social worker investigates the rules-bending circumstances in which a
boy lives with his iconoclastic uncle, an unemployed writer.

Feb. 21-23, 1972:“Z” (1969): Color. Directed by Costa-Gavras. Cast:
Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Irene Papas. Note: A political
assassination’s cover-up in Greece spawns a compelling based-on-truth
whodunit, with sudden plot twists, all told at a furious pace."The Battle of Algiers"
(1966): B&W. Directed by Gillo
Pontecorvo. Note: This account of the cruel tactics employed by both
warring sides during the Algerian revolution is part documentary, part
staged suspenseful recreation. Unforgettable.

Mar. 17-20, 1972:“Gimme Shelter” (1970): Color. Directed by Albert
Maysles and David Maysles. Performers: The Rolling Stones, the
Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Tina Turner and more. Note: A
documentary with much concert footage and one murder.“T.A.M.I. Show” (1964): B&W. Directed by Steve
Binder. Performers: the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, the Supremes,
James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Lesley
Gore and more appear in concert footage.

Apr. 12-13, 1972:"Bell Du Jour" (1967): Color. Director: Luis Buñuel. Cast:
Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli. Note: Beautiful Severine
loves her successful husband. With him she’s frigid. Her kinky fantasies
lead her to the oldest profession … only by day.
"A Man and a Woman"
(1966): Color. Director: Claude Lelouche. Cast: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis
Trintignan. Note: A widower and a widow meet by chance at their
childrens' boarding school. As
the struggle to deal with their attraction to one another, neither has gotten over their loss.

June 1-7, 1972:“McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1969): Color. Directed
by Robert Altman. Cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie. Note: With
Altman, the routine gambling, prostitution and power struggles in the Old West take
on a different sort of look. More grit. Less glory. All random.

June 14-18, 1972:“Putney Swope” (1969): Both B&W and color. Directed
by Robert Downey Sr. Cast: Stan Gottlieb, Allen Garfield, Archie
Russell. Note: This strange but hilarious send-up of Madison Avenue was
Downey’s effort to crossover from underground to legit. Probably his most accessible work."Trash"
(1970): Color. Director: Paul Morrissey. Cast: Joe Dallesandro, Holly
Woodlawn. Note: It was billed as "Andy Warhol's Trash," as he was
credited with being the producer of Morrissey's series of undergroundish
films. This one reveals the down-and-out urban lifestyle of an oddball
couple.

June 29-July 2, 1972:"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964): B&W. Directed by Stanley
Kubrick. Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim
Pickens. Note: This nuke-mocking black comedy
raised eyebrows at the height of the Cold War. Still a laugh riot. “M.A.S.H.”
(1970): Color. Directed by Robert Altman.
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman. Note: This
cynical comedy about doctoring too close to the pointless battles
of the Korean War is much funnier than the long-running TV show that followed it.

Sept. 21-24, 1972:"Citizen Kane" (1941): B&W. Directed by Orson Welles. Cast:
Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore. Note: The meaning of a
powerful, lonely man’s last word enlarges into a mystery. Flashbacks
reveal a large life driven by lusts and obsessions. As American as it gets. "The Magnificent Ambersons"
(1942): B&W. Directed by Orson Welles. Cast: Tim Holt, Joseph
Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter. Note. This truncated-by-the
studio version of what the indulgent director intended follows the
meandering story of a prominent family's fortunes.

Oct. 9-11, 1972: “The Third Man” (1949): B&W. Directed by Carol
Reed. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli. Note: This elegant
film noir mystery, set in crumbling post-war Vienna, is pleasing to the
eye and stylishly cynical. Hey, no heroes here, but great music. "Breathless" (1960): B&W. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Cast:
Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg. Note: An opportunistic thief on the lam
becomes irresistible to a pretty American journalism student in Paris.
Uh-oh, the guy is dangerous. How long can living in the moment last?

Nov. 17-19, 1972:“Duck Soup” (1933): B&W. Directed by Leo
McCarey. Cast: The Four Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo), Margaret Dumont.
Note: With Rufus T. Firefly as dictator of Freedonia and flush from a
fat loan from Mrs. Teasdale, what could hilariously go wrong? How about war?"Horse Feathers" (1932): B&W. Directed by Norman McLeod. Cast: The Four Marx
Brothers, Thelma Todd. Note: The
Biograph's secret password that opened doors was "swordfish." The scene
that spawned that tradition is in this gag-filled send-up of on-campus life and football.

Dec. 7-10, 1972:“The Producers”
(1968): Color. Directed by Mel
Brooks. Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn. Note:
Brooks’ first feature film laughed at Nazis with what was a fresh
audacity. Mostel and Wilder are so funny it ought to be illegal.“The Graduate (1967):
Color. Directed by Mike Nichols. Cast: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman,
Katherine Ross. Note: The mores of upper middle class life in the '60s are laid
bare, as a recent college graduate's idleness leads to an affair with
the beautiful, but wrong older woman.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Note: Fifty years ago, yesterday, the Tet Offensive was launched in Vietnam. A week before, the USS Pueblo had been captured at sea.
It was a hell of a way to start a year. It was 1968.

*

Jan. 23: The USS Pueblo was seized on the high seas by North
Korean forces; at least that’s the story I got. At the time I was in the
Navy and I had little doubt we would rescue the Pueblo’s crew, even if
it meant another war.

Subsequently, as captives, the Pueblo’s 83 men endured an ordeal that
was shocking to an American public that had naively thought its Super
Power status meant such things could not happen.

Jan. 30: The Tet Offensive began, as the shadowy Viet Cong flexed
its muscles and blurred battle lines with simultaneous assaults in many parts of South Vietnam. Even the American embassy in
Saigon was attacked.

Mar. 16: Some 500 Vietnamese villagers -- women, children and old
men (animals, too) -- were killed by American soldiers on patrol in
what came to be known as the My Lai Massacre. However, it would be another 20
months before investigative journalist Seymour Hersh would break the
horrifying story of the covered-up massacre, via the Associated Press
wire service.

Mar. 31: Facing the burgeoning antiwar-driven campaigns of Sen.
Eugene McCarthy and Sen. Robert Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson
suddenly withdrew from the presidential race, declining to run for
reelection by saying, “I shall not seek and I will not accept the
nomination...”

Apr. 4: America’s most respected civil rights leader, Martin
Luther King, was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots followed in cities
coast-to-coast. The bitterness that remained after the dust settled was
scary.

In Richmond, it ended an era. Young adventurous whites who followed
music could no longer go in the black clubs they had once patronized. No more Sahara Club for me.

May 13: The USA and North Vietnam began a series of negotiations
to end the war in Vietnam that came to be known as the Paris Peace
Talks. Ironically, as a backdrop, France, itself, was in chaos. Workers
and students had shut down much of the country with a series of strikes.
The trains weren’t running, the airports were closed, as were schools,
etc.

May 24: On the same day I was discharged from the Navy, Father
Philip Berrigan and Thomas Lewis (of Artists Concerned About Vietnam)
got six-year sentences for destroying federal property, stemming
from an incident in which duck blood was poured over draft files at
Baltimore’s Selective Service headquarters.

June 3: Artist Andy Warhol nearly died from wounds received from a
gunshot fired by Valerie Solanis. She was a sometime writer and one of
the many off-beat characters who had occasionally hung out at Warhol’s
famous studio, The Factory.

June 5: Having just won the California primary, Robert Kennedy
was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles. The hopes of millions
that the Vietnam War would end soon died that night.

It’s hard to
imagine that Richard Nixon would have been able to defeat Kennedy in the
general election. Kennedy's death meant the gravy
train being enjoyed by
big corporations supplying the war effort would continue to chug along.

June 8: James Earl Ray was arrested in London. Eventually, he was
convicted of murdering Martin Luther King. Yet, questions about that
crime and Ray's role linger today.

July 23: After watching “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the
Westhampton Theatre, I saw The Who play live on stage at the Mosque (now
the Altria Theater). Looking at the long line to get into the concert, I
was quite surprised at how many hippies there were in Richmond. This was
in the period the band was into smashing up its equipment to finish off
shows.

The acid I took that day served me well.

Aug. 20: Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush what
had been a season of renaissance. As it had been with the construction
of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis, talk of World War III
being one button-push away was commonplace.

Aug. 28: In Chicago the Democratic convention that selected Vice
President Hubert Humphrey to top its ticket melted down. With tear gas
in the air and blood in the streets 178 demonstrators/bystanders were
arrested. Many were roughed up on live television. As cops clubbed
citizens in the streets,on the convention floor CBS reporters Mike Wallace and Dan Rather were
punched.

Watching the riots surrounding the Democratic convention on television, I
began wondering if those who were saying our society was coming unglued
might be right. Consequently, for the first time my political ideas
were aired out in a newspaper, when my letter to the editor was
published by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That experience began a love
affair with seeing my name in print.

Oct. 18: At the Summer Olympics at Mexico City, American track
stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists during the medal
ceremony for the 200 meter race. Smith and Carlos wore black gloves (and
other symbolic accouterments) for a protest gesture that was widely
seen as a “black power” salute.

Also elected that day was Shirley Chisholm from Brooklyn. She was the
first black female to serve in the House of Representatives.

Dec. 21: The first manned space mission to escape Earth’s gravity and orbit the moon began with the launching of Apollo 8.

Dec. 24: After having its way with them for 11 months, torture
and mock executions included, North Korea released all of the members of
the Pueblo’s crew but kept the ship. The U.S. Navy seemed to
blame the Pueblo’s captain, Commander Lloyd M. "Pete" Bucher, for the entire
painful fiasco. Mercifully, the Secretary of the Navy called off any
official punishment.

At the time, there was a cumulative, escalating feeling that connected the most earthshaking events of 1968. Each crazy thing that happened seemed to be feeding off of the last crazy
thing.

After 1968, the general public’s
perception of the antiwar movement’s
protests as being unpatriotic kaleidoscoped into something else. In June
of 1969 LIFE Magazine published “The Faces of the American Dead
in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll.” It was a ten-page story that featured
photographs and the names of 242 men who had died in the war in one
week.

The effect was dramatic. Looking at all those hopeful young faces was too much to bear, when we knew each
coming week was going to claim the lives of another two or three hundred young men.

In 1969 the
Hawks' picture of how a victory in Vietnam would look was fading into a
blur. With 1968 in the rear-view mirror, the Doves were beginning to prevail in the
propaganda struggle. Nonetheless, the bloody war went on for years.

Friday, January 26, 2018

One pleasant afternoon in the
mid-1970s, I was walking some 20 yards behind a guy heading east on the
800 block of West Grace Street. It was probably summertime. Curiously, he picked up the Organic Food Store’s hand-painted sandwich board style
sign from the sidewalk in front of the store and put it under his arm.

Without
looking around for any witnesses, he resumed his walk, eastward. I don't remember what I thought, at the time but to close the distance between us, I
walked a little faster down the red
brick sidewalk.

By the time we had passed the Biograph Theatre, where I
worked, was plotting what to do. I was sure he had no honest reason to take the sign. He was a
big-haired hippie, 18 to 20 years old. I suppose he could have been a student. Or,
he might have been a traveling panhandler/opportunist. In those days
there were plenty of both in the neighborhood.

Passing by Sally
Bell’s Kitchen, in the 700 block, I was within five or six yards of him
when I spoke the lines I had written for myself. My tone
was resolute: “Hey, I saw you take the sign. Don’t turn
around. Just put it down and walk away.”

The thief’s
body
language announced that he had heard me. He didn’t turn around.
Instead he walked faster. I continued following and I said with more force:
“Put the sign down. The cops are already on the way. Walk away while you still
can.”

Without
further ado the wooden sign clattered onto the sidewalk. The sign thief
kept just going without looking back. As I gathered my neighbor’s property I
watched the fleeing hippie break into a sprint, cross Grace Street and
disappear going toward Monroe Park at the next corner.

So I carried the recovered property back to the store. Obviously, I don’t really remember
exactly what I said in this incident all those years ago, verbatim, but what you just read was a faithful recounting of the events and the spirit of what I said.

What I had done came in part from my young man’s sense of righteous indignation. That, together
with the spirit of camaraderie that existed among some of the
neighborhood’s merchants in that time. There were several of us, then in
our mid-to-late-20s, who were running businesses on that bohemian strip — bars,
retail shops, etc. We were friends and we watched out for one another.

My
tough guy performance had
lasted less than a minute. Now
I’m amazed that I used to do such things. The character I invented was
drawn somewhat from
Humphrey Bogart, with as much Robert Mitchum as I could muster. Hey,
since he bought the act, the
thief probably felt lucky to have gotten away. Who knows? Maybe he’s
still telling this same story, too, but from another angle.

This
much I know — that quirky pop scene on Grace Street in those days was a
goldmine of offbeat stories. Chelf’s Drug Store was at the corner
of Grace and Shafer. With its antique soda fountain and a few booths,
it had been a hangout for magazine-reading, alienated art students for decades. It seemed frozen in time.

The original Village
Restaurant, a block west of Chelf’s, was a legendary beatnik watering
hole, going back to the 1950s. Writer Tom Robbins and artist William
Fletcher “Bill” Jones (1930-‘98) hung out there. In the '60s and '70s the same neighborhood was also home to
cartoon-like characters such as the wandering Flashlight Lady and the
Grace Street Midget.

By the late-'70s the scene in that neighborhood had evolved. It was meaner and more dangerous. Bars needed bouncers at the door. Hippies were being replaced by punks. Cocaine was replacing pot as the most popular recreational drug.

In 1981, or so, I can also remember a day
when an angry, red-bearded street
beggar with a missing foot was scaring old ladies coming and going from
the then-new Dominion Place apartment building on the 1000 block of
Grace. We were about the same age. I said something to him like, "Cut it
out and move on."

The surly panhandler laughed like a villain in a slasher movie and threatened to, “Bite a plug” out of me. Wisely, I didn’t
press my case any further. Instead, I moved on.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Facing east on Monument Avenue I was waiting for the stoplight to
change. Then
a fresh thought struck me like bolt from the blue. It was some 30 years ago.

The sights were as familiar as could be. The J.E.B. Stuart
monument and the hospital named for that place on the map -- Stuart
Circle. I was born in that hospital and so was my daughter.

Not
too long before this moment in the 1980s, I had run for a seat on
Richmond's City Council. The task of campaigning had exposed me to some
neighborhoods in my home town that had been mostly unfamiliar to me before I
suddenly decided to run for office. Why I took that plunge, with no
chance to win, is another story, for another day. But the reason for
mentioning it here is how eye-opening that experience was.

For one thing, I don't think I had ever spent any time in Gilpin Court before the campaign trail took me there. It was part of the Fifth District, which also included the part of the
Fan District that was behind the equestrian statue before me. Virginia
Commonwealth University's academic campus was sprawled out in the blocks
ahead, just beyond the statue.

Looking at that looming depiction of a man
on a horse a question exploded in my head: What
would I have thought of that statue if I had been born black, instead of
white, and I had grown up in a housing project like Gilpin
Court?

The thought that followed made me laugh.
Answering my own question provided me with a momentary
walk-in-the-other-man's-shoes epiphany, as I said to myself: "By the
time I was 16, I would have blown that damn thing up."

That
prompted me to be amazed that it hadn't already happened. Folks who
remember the 16-year-old version of me should be laughing now. At least a
few of them know there would have been some chance I would have
really done it ... had I been a headstrong black teenager, who, like me,
got thrown out of school regularly.

Before that newfound flash
of empathy, I don't think I had ever tried to imagine myself as a black
Richmonder looking at those statues of Confederate generals, day after
day. Ever since then, I've seen those memorials to the Lost Cause in a
different light.

Today I think a lot of good people in
Richmond need to try to step into the other man's shoes, if only for a
second, and take another look at Monument Avenue's famous statues.

Monday, January 01, 2018

On
Saturday afternoon (Dec. 30) at the Siegel Center Virginia Commonwealth
University's senior forward, Justin Tillman, turned in his fifth
double-double performance of the season – 23 points and 14 rebounds. It
did much to help propel VCU to its fourth consecutive victory.

In
what was their first Atlantic 10 game of the season the VCU Rams, (9-5, 1-0 in A-10) built up a 22-point lead near the end of the first half,
then coasted through the second half. The visiting Rams of Fordham never
got closer than an 8-point difference. Final score: VCU 76, Fordham 63.

A
capacity crowd of 7,637 (109th consecutive sell-out) saw Tillman hit
the game's first shot, a 3-pointer from the top of the key. Sophomore guard De’Riante Jenkins
scored 14 points. Sophomore guard Malik Crowfield added 10 points.
Sophomore guard/forward Issac Vann played for 26 minutes off the bench,
after a month out of action nursing an ankle injury. Vann scored 9
points, grabbed 5 rebounds and dished out 5 assists. His defensive
contribution was also noticeable.

VCU's next game is against St. Joseph’s (5-7, 0-1 in A-10) in Philadelphia on Wed., Jan. 3, at 7 p.m. (MASN).

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

This photo of Larry Rohr riding through the Biograph's larger auditorium on was shot on March 1, 1980.

In 1975 “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” produced by Lou Adler, was
released by 20th Century Fox. Adapted from the British gender-bending
stage musical, “The Rocky Horror Show,” the movie died at the box
office. The critics didn’t particularly like it, either.

The odd-ball story of the movie’s second life — as the cult midnight
show king of all-time — is said to have begun at the Waverly Theater in Manhattan, when
during the spring of 1977 audience members began calling out
sarcastic comeback lines at the screen. It became a game to make up
new and better lines.

Later that same year the rather unprecedented interaction between audience
and screen jumped to other cities, where “Rocky Horror” was also
playing as a midnight show — chiefly, Austin and Los Angeles. Cheap
props and campy costumes mimicking those in the film appeared.

So, by the spring of 1978 “Rocky Horror” was playing to wildly
enthusiastic crowds in a few midnight show bookings. Yet, curiously, it
had not done well at others. At this point, what would eventually
become an unprecedented pop culture phenomenon was still flying below the
radar for most of America.

We had already asked Fox, the distributor, about playing it but were told there weren't any prints available. Then a trip to LA in May of that year boosted my interest in the film. I was fascinated with what I was told about what was happening out there with “Rocky
Horror.” I told my bosses in Georgetown what I'd learned and we decided to try harder to book it. Their former
partner, David Levy, had beaten them to it for the D.C. market; it had recently started playing at The Key.

Once again, our inquiry to the distributor hit a roadblock. With all of the existing prints of the
movie still in use, the brass at Fox felt unwilling to risk money on
striking any more prints to cater to a weird fad that might fizzle any
time; there was no enthusiasm for the picture’s prospects in
Richmond.

In those days Richmond was generally seen by most movie distributors as a
weak market — not a place to waste resources. Besides, no one at Fox
seemed to understand why the audience participation following for the
picture had started, or what was making it catch on in some places, but
not in others.

Over the telephone, I was told we would simply have to wait for a print to
become available; there was no telling how long that would be.

So, sensing the moment might pass us by, we got creative. The Biograph
offered to front the cost of a new print to be made, which would
stand as an advance against film rental (35 percent of the box office
take). For that consideration we wanted a guarantee from the
distributor that we would have the exclusive rights to exhibit “Rocky
Horror” in the Richmond market, as long we held onto that same print and
paid Fox the film rental due.

Fox went for the deal. Based on the quirky success of the movie in the
cities where it was playing well, I decided to use a concept that had
worked with other cult films at the Biograph — let the audience
“discover” the movie. Don’t over-promote it and draw the sort of
general audience that might include too many people who could leave
the theater bad-mouthing it.

Instead, the strategy called for attracting the taste-makers, the ones
who must see everything on opening night, to see it first. Their
endorsement would spread the good word. Accordingly, I produced radio
spots using about 20 seconds of the “Time Warp” cut on the soundtrack
to run on WGOE-AM. The only ad copy came at the very end. The listener
heard my voice say, “Get in the act … midnight at the Biograph.”

There was no explanation of what the music was, or what the ad was
even about. We put out a handbill with a pencil drawing of Riff Raff — a
character in the movie — against a black background, with the
distinctive dripping blood title in red. The “Get in the Act” theme was
repeated. The hook was that none of it gave the listener/reader as
much information as they expected. Still, it was more than enough to
alert the fanatics who had already been going to D.C. or New York to
see it.

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” opened June 30, 1978 and drew an
enthusiastic crowd, but it was far short of a sell-out. Some of those
who attended called out wisecrack lines, to respond to the movie’s
dialogue. Most did not. A handful of people dressed in costumes drawn
from characters in the movie.

In the next few weeks a devoted following for the rock ‘n’ roll
send-up of science fiction and horror flicks snowballed. At the center
of that following was a regular troupe who became the costumed singers
and dancers that turned each midnight screening into a performance
art adventure.

John Porter, a VCU theater major, emerged as the leader of that group;
they called themselves The Floorshow. Dressed in his Frankenfurter
get-up, Porter missed few, if any, midnight screenings at the Biograph
for the next couple of years.

There were a lot of crazy things that happened in the years of
babysitting “Rocky Horror.“ Among them was the Saturday night we threw
out the entire full house, because so many people had gone wild;
bare-chested rednecks were hosing the crowd down with our fire
extinguishers. Fights were underway when we shut down the projector and
the movie slowly ground to a halt. Everybody got their money back.

Interestingly, after that melodramatic stunt, we never had much trouble with violence to do with “Rocky Horror” again.

However, there was no stranger night than when about six weeks into
the run, a man in his 30s breathed his last, as he sat in the small
auditorium watching “F.I.S.T.” Yes, that Sylvester Stallone vehicle was
particularly lame, but who knew it was potentially lethal?

The dead man’s face was expressionless … he just expired.

When the rescue squad guys got there they jerked him out of his chair
and onto the floor. As jolts of electricity were shot through the dead
man’s body, down in Theater No. 1 “Rocky Horror“ was on the Biograph’s
larger screen delighting a packed house.

The audience had no idea of what was going on elsewhere in the
building. A couple of times, I walked back and forth between the two
scenes, feeling the bizarre juxtaposition.

Learning just how much to allow the performers to do, what limits were
practical or necessary, came with experience. Porter’s leadership of
the regulars was a key to keeping it fun, but not out of control. For
his part John was given a lifetime pass to the Biograph.

On Friday, March 1, 1980, with its 88th consecutive week, “Rocky
Horror” established a new record for longevity in Richmond. It broke
the record of 87 weeks, established by “The Sound of Music” (1965) during its first-run engagement at the
Willow Lawn.

March 1, 1980.

That night Porter and I were both dressed in tuxedos (as pictured above). In front of the
full house he held up a “Sound of Music” soundtrack album. I smashed it
with a hammer, which went over quite well with the folks on hand. A
couple of the regulars came dressed as Julie Andrews, in a nice touch
to underline the special night‘s theme.

The late Carole Kass, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s sweetheart of a
entertainment writer/movie critic, wrote up a nice feature on what was
basically hokum.

That same night Larry Rohr (as seen in the photo at the top of the page) rode his
motorcycle through the auditorium’s aisles at the point in the story
when Meatloaf’s character in the film, Eddie, rides his motorcycle.

Rohr’s careful but noisy rides happened only on a few special
occasions, like the record breaking night. Nothing bad ever happened.
One time, after we had just barely dodged the fire marshal, to get
Larry in position at the proper time — which underlined some nagging what-ifs
about what we were doing — I had a dream that the Biograph exploded. The
nightmare scared me so much about the danger of the stunt that the
motorcycle rides were discontinued.

Afterwards, one
of the Floorshow members occasionally rode a tricycle through. Now, of
course, it seems crazy as hell that I ever facilitated such
shenanigans. In the context of the times, it was just
another
part of living out the theater’s slogan/motto — Have a Good Time.

While
“Rocky Horror” had an underground cachet in the first year or so
of its run, its status eventually changed in the staff’s eyes. Rice,
toast and all sorts of other stuff that got tossed around — never at
the screen! — had to be cleaned up each and every time by the
grumbling janitors, who grew to detest the movie. To keep the peace
they got “Rocky Horror” bonuses — a few extra bucks for their weekend
shifts.

Once into the third year of the Friday and Saturday midnight
screenings the demand began to wither. By then much of the audience
seemed to be tourists from the suburbs … any city’s suburbs. The Fan
District’s fast crowd in the punk rock scene mostly ignored it. The
shows didn’t sell out, anymore, but they continued to do enough
business to justify holding onto that original print.

No doubt, some number of lifelong friendships stem from the nights the
kids were dancing to the Time Warp in the aisles at the Biograph. The
five-year run of “Rocky Horror” ended on June 25, 1983.

Monday, December 11, 2017

Note: The remembrance below was originally posted here on SLANTblog nine years ago (Nov. 20, 2008), shortly after the death of Rozanne Epps (pictured right).

After watching the excellent new HBO documentary, "The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee," I had a telephone conversation in which I rambled onto citing the importance of having good editors (in the old days), and now ... which eventually led to mentioning Rozanne as an example of a skilled editor that I loved working with. So I decided to re-post this brief tribute to a person who deserves to be remembered well.

Rozanne Epps led a full life before she died at the age of 86 on
Sunday. For over 20 years she worked at STYLE Weekly, going back to the
days when Lorna Wyckoff was still its publisher. I knew of her long
before her days at STYLE, because of her noteworthy career at VCU.
(Click here for background
in the STYLE obituary.) And, I knew her as Garrett Epps' mother. I knew
him only casually when he was a member of the staff at the Richmond
Mercury, along with Frank Rich, Harry Stein, Glenn Frankel and others in the early-70s.

But my only real association with her began in 1999, when she
accepted one piece I submitted to STYLE and sent me to Richmond.com with
the other. The one that ran as a Back Page piece was about baseball.
The one that began my relationship with Richmond.com was about the
closing of the Texas Wisconsin Border Cafe.

Over the
years since, STYLE, and especially Richmond.com, have published a lot of
my work. So, I'm grateful to her for that good turn. However, what I
got from her as an editor is why I'm writing this remembrance. Rozanne
taught me to be a better writer. She did that with good humor and
fairness. It was always fun to exchange emails and talk on the telephone
with her.

So, to those who knew her far better than I did, yes, we are all lucky we knew Rozanne Epps.

Wednesday, December 06, 2017

Tues., Dec. 5, 2017: It was the 105th consecutive sell-out crowd
for the home-standing VCU Rams. ESPN2 was in the house, so a national
television audience had also watched the Texas Longhorns build a 19-point lead with 11:59
left in the game.

Then VCU went on a run and there were moments it got as loud as
I've heard it at the Siegel Center. OK, maybe it was louder when the
Rams beat the Louisville Cardinals, on Nov. 19, 1999, the night the first game was played in that arena.
I'm not sure.

At the 3:52 mark VCU took its only lead in the game:
VCU 63, Texas 62.

For the next two-and-a-half minutes neither team scored. Then the
visitors pulled ahead and went on to win what was a first class college
basketball game. Indeed, both teams left it all on the floor.

Final score: Texas 71, VCU 67.

The Rams senior forward, Justin Tillman, led all scorers with 22 points. Tillman also grabbed 10 rebounds. Much of the game he was working against Texas forward Mohamed Bamba, the 7-foot-tall freshman phenom with the monster wingspan. Bamba blocked 4 shots, changed several others and got 13 boards to match his 13 points. He is widely expected to be a lottery pick in the next NBA draft.

Anyway, after the game in the media room, it was packed with
sports writers, broadcasters and others who have access. Hoops fan Stuart
Siegel was there; he frequently is. So were Dr. Eugene Trani (VCU President Emeritus) and his
wife, Lois. VCU's Coach Mike Rhoades faced the assembled press. He
did his usual fine job of handling the ordeal.

After Rhoades cleared
out, Shaka Smart sat in the hot seat. Smart seemed eager to say, "This is a special place to play a basketball game." He also seemed tired.

When Smart was through answering questions the reporters started
to pack up and leave. Dr. Trani approached Smart and the two had a
warm but brief conversation. So I snapped a quick shot of them
with my cell phone. Then Trani asked me to take a photo of the three
of them. I was happy to document the moment.

Monday, December 04, 2017

Shaka Smart returns to Richmond on Dec. 5, when his Texas Longhorns will face the VCU Rams at the
Siegel Center. ESPN2 will carry the telecast (7 p.m.).

VCU's senior forward Justin Tillmanhas been named Atlantic 10
Conference Co-Player of the Week. He shares the award with George Washington's senior guard Yuta Watanabe.

In leading the Rams to two wins last week, Appalachian State (85-72) and Old Dominion (82-75), Tillman averaged 24.5 points and 6 rebounds per game. The
6-foot-8 forward's 28 points (10 for 13 from the floor) against ODU on Saturday was a career-high. For the season, Tillman is averaging a team-high 15.5 points per game.

The Rams (5-3) next game is on Tues., Dec.
5, when they will host Shaka Smart's Texas Longhorns (5-2) at the Siegel Center. Tip-off
is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

With
the turning of the leaves, The Fan District of Richmond, Va., will
again be transformed into a living impressionistic cityscape. As they
always do, the season’s wistful breezes will facilitate reflection.

All
of which leads to the fact that yet another baseball season has come
and gone. After 6,783 games, the last game ever has been played at
Detroit’s fabled Tiger Stadium. The Giants and the Astros will be
playing in new parks next season, as well. The World Series, first
played in 1903, will soon be upon us. Although baseball’s claim as the
National Pastime may no longer hold up, the colorful lore generated by
the magic of events at baseball parks probably outweighs that of all the
other sports, put together.

In the mid-1950s I began going to the
Richmond V's (for Virginians) games at Parker Field with my grandfather. Probably saw my first game
when I was about seven. Naturally, I eagerly drank in all I could of the
atmosphere, especially the stories told about legendary players and
discussions on the strategy of the game.

As I got
older I began going to games with my friends, most of whom played baseball. We
usually took our baseball gloves with us to the game. We’d go early so
we could watch the V’s warm up. As often as possible we talked with the
players. If one of them remembered your name it was a source of pride. When
we cheered the heroics we witnessed and rose for the seventh inning
stretch and stayed until the last out, regardless of the score, it was
tantamount to exercising religious rites.

A few
seasons before they tore Parker Field down (it was dismantled in 1984
and in its place stands The Diamond), I experienced one last thrill at
the old ballpark. This was when my daughter, Katey, was about seven
years old.

The home team by then — as it is now — was
The Braves. Katey, her mother and I were sitting in box seats as
guests of neighbors who had gotten comps from a radio station. It was
probably Katey’s first trip to Parker Field.

The spectacle
itself was interesting to her for a while. As it was a night game, the
bright lights were dazzling. The roar of the crowd was exhilarating.
Being old enough to go along on such an outing, instead of staying at
home with a baby sitter, was a boost to her morale. Nonetheless, by the
middle of the game Katey (pictured above at about the age of this
story) was getting tired of sitting still and bored with baseball.

During
the sixth inning it fell to me to entertain, or at least restrain her,
so the others could enjoy the game. I tried telling her more about the
object of baseball, hoping that would help her pay some attention to
the game.

That didn’t work for very long. She was soon
climbing across seats again and this time she knocked a man’s beer
into his lap. As the visiting team began their turn at bat, in the top
of the seventh, I got an idea and asked Katey if she wanted to see some
magic. Of course she did.

Then I got her to promise
to be good if I showed her a magic trick. She agreed to the terms. Making sure she alone could hear me, I pulled
her in close and whispered my instructions.

The gist of
it was that she and I, using our combined powers of concentration,
were going to make everyone in the ballpark stand up at the same time.
Katey was thrilled at the mere prospect of such a feat. I told her to
face the ongoing game, close her eyes, and begin thinking about making
the crowd stand up.

After the visiting team made their third out, I cupped my hand to her ear and reminded her to think, “stand up, stand up …”

As
baseball fans know, when the home team comes to bat in the bottom of
the seventh inning everyone stands up, ostensibly to stretch their legs.
It’s a longtime tradition called “the seventh inning stretch.” There’s
a mention of the practice in a report about a Cincinnati Red Stockings
(baseball’s first professional team) game that took place in 1869.

Tradition
aside — when Katey turned around, opened her big blue eyes and saw
thousands of people standing up — it was pure magic in her book.

No
one in the group gave me away when she explained what we had just done. As I
remember it, she stayed true to her word and was well-behaved the rest
of the game. It was a few years later that Katey confronted me, having learned how the trick worked. We still laugh about it.

Some sports
fans today complain that baseball games are too slow and
meandering. While I admit baseball has its lulls, nonetheless there are
textures and layers of information present at baseball parks that are
just too subtle and ephemeral for the lens of a TV camera to capture. To
appreciate them you have to be there. You have to bother to
notice.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Good storytellers
know "discovery" is a device that can magnify the power of a message embedded in the plot.
That's why they sometimes allow their readers/viewers to discover keys to
unlocking the mystery. Of course, a little subtle foreshadowing can
help goose the process of discovering. In real life, we also know plenty of people seem to have more faith in
what they've figured out, for themselves, than they do in whatever they've been told.

OK, four games into
the season, Coach
Mike Rhoades' 2017-18 VCU Rams team
has had the opportunity to
discover, firsthand, something important to most D-I teams striving to
achieve their goals. Having lost two consecutive games, both
against teams that will likely be in the postseason conversation in
March – UVA's 'Hoos and Marquette's Golden Eagles – and the Rams should have seen that
summer league defense usually won't beat such teams.

No doubt, this is
something Coach Rhoades has already mentioned more than a few times in team practices. So, do his players – 10 of
which have only played four games in black and gold – need to lose
more games to see the truth clearly?

As Col. Nathan R. Jessep (Jack Nicholson) suggested memorably, in "A Few Good Men" (1992), maybe these young and talented Rams can't handle the truth ... yet. We'll
soon see. VCU has two more games in Hawaii to start proving to
themselves they are getting better.

Can these Rams change to playing a withering full-court defense, time and again, without fouling too much?

Around the backboard, before
poising to out-jump everybody, can they remember to first box out?

Can they deflect more passes and dive for more loose
balls on the floor? Can they be more aggressive on
defense, take more chances?

In a nutshell, when can
Rhodes' Rams start becoming a team capable of playing intense defense, as a unit, for a game's 40 minutes? That, rather than being five guys running around the floor in the same uniforms?

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Monday night at the Siegel Center VCU's
senior power forward, Justin Tillman, schooled the visiting
University of North Florida Ospreys on what a bona fide Atlantic 10 preseason poll first team pick looks
like, up close. Tillman scored 27 points (on 13-for-17 shooting from
the field). He also grabbed eight boards and blocked a couple of
shots.

Still, the Rams
had to score the last seven points of the game to win it by 10
points: VCU 95, NF 85.

That victory moved the Rams to a 2-0 record. VCU's undefeated
status will be severely tested on Friday, when the University of
Virginia Cavaliers visit the Rams' West Broad Street home court (4 p.m.;
CBSSN). The game will be VCU's 102nd consecutive sell-out. The Cavs,
with their stingy Pack Line defense, are also sitting at 2-0.

It's worth noting thatVirginia
has held its two opponents this season to 48 and 49 points. VCU,
with its explosive offense, has scored 94 and 95 points. Something's
got to give. However, with Virginia's reputation for running a
painfully deliberate offense the pace of the game could well be a key factor for
the winner. The Rams will surely want to play faster than the Cavs.

Two games into the 2017-18 season two pleasant
surprises about new VCU players are: Sophomore transfer Issac Vann, a
small forward, was billed as a potent addition to the Rams offense.
While he's shown flashes that back that up, Vann been one of the better
defensive players. Freshman power forward Sean Mobley has
shown good court sense as well as a pair of good hands. Look for them to get more playing time.

The overall
athleticism of Coach Mike Rhoades' young squad is impressive, but that's been more in evidence when the Rams have the ball. On Friday
VCU's defense will probably be tested more than it has been this season.